Bithoven – A high-level, imperative language for Bitcoin Smart Contract

In plain words

Bithoven is a high-level imperative programming language that compiles to native Bitcoin Script for Legacy, SegWit, and Taproot implementations. It allows developers to write smart contracts using familiar syntax like if/else statements and return declarations rather than manually managing Bitcoin Script's stack operations. The language includes type safety features for booleans, signatures, strings, and numbers, designed to make Bitcoin smart contract development more accessible and less error-prone than writing raw opcodes.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Bithoven is a smart contract language for composing powerful and secure instruments on Bitcoin. LR(1) parser with static analysis for compile-time safety. Formal verification paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.01436 - ChrisCho-H/bithoven

Bithoven is a type-safe, developer-friendly programming language designed to compile down to native Bitcoin Script. It bridges the gap between complex smart contract logic and the low-level stack machine of the Bitcoin Virtual Machine (VM). Write readable, auditable code with modern control flow ( if/else ), named variables, and built-in safety checks—then compile it to highly optimized Bitcoin Script for SegWit or Taproot. # For CLI user cargo install bithoven # For rust user cargo add bithoven # For js user npm install bithoven Writing Your First Contract Bithoven contracts are defined with a .bithoven extension. Below is an implementation of a standard Hashed Time-Locked Contract (HTLC)…from github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hey HN! I’m a researcher working on Bitcoin smart contracts, and today I’m releasing Bithoven—a high-level imperative language that compiles to native Bitcoin Script (Legacy, SegWit, and Taproot). The Goal: Raw Bitcoin Script is notoriously difficult to reason about. Writing raw Bitcoin Script today feels like…

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